251 Quotes by Kay Redfield Jamison

Suicide Note: The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. -Langston Hughes.

I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been midly manic. When I am my present “normal” self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In short, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.

Suicide is not a blot on anyone’s name; it is a tragedy.

Others, the subject of this book, are likewise privy to their unconscious streams of thought, but they must contend with unusually tumultuous and unpredictable emotions as well. The integration of these deeper, truly irrational sources with more logical processes can be a tortuous task, but, if successful, the resulting work often bears a unique stamp, a “touch of fire,” for what it has been through.

I think psychotherapy saves lives and is hugely meaningful and I think that one of the unfortunate aspects of prescription drugs working well is that people tend to think that’s enough.

One of the advantages of science is that one’s work, ultimately, is either replicated or it is not.

Mania can be as terrifying as it gets. It is certainly as insane as one gets and so it’s frightening when it gets out of control, but there are periods of mania when it can be extremely attractive.

I had a horrible sense of loss for who I had been and where I had been. It was difficult to give up the high flights of mind and mood, even though the depressions that inevitably followed nearly cost me my life.

Melancholic, although often sardonic, mixtures of emoitions-foreboding, aloneness, regret, and a dark sense of lost destiny and ill-used passions-are woven throughout Byron’s most autobiographical poems, especially Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Lara, and Manfred. Perturbed and constant motion, coupled with a brooding awareness of life’s impermanence, also mark the transient and often bleak nature of Byron’s work.